By IPS Correspondents
SAN JOSE, Jul 10 1995 (IPS)

A move towards dialogue with the Cuban government by a sector of the Cuban exile community in the United States has given President Fidel Castro a golden opportunity to divide that powerful lobby to his benefit.

In late June, Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, leader of the anti-Castro organisation Cuban Change, who spent 22 years in Cuban prisons after participating in a failed military invasion in 1964, met for three hours with the Cuban president in Havana.

The 60-year-old Gutierrez Menoyo argues today that a search for a solution between the exile community and the Cuban government should be non-violent, and must be based on negotiations with Castro.

That idea is diametrically opposed to the traditional position of the Cuban-American Foundation, led by the millionaire Jorge Mas Canosa, which calls for the overthrow of Castro and the elimination of all traces of socialism from the island nation.

The clearest sign that a new division is emerging among the community of nearly two million Cuban exiles in the U.S. state of Florida came after Gutierrez Menoyo’s return to Miami following his meeting with Castro.

The leader of Cuban Change was received quietly, without massive protests, in sharp contrast with the hostile reception given to 200 exiles upon their return from participating in a meeting in Havana with representatives of the Cuban government in April 1994.

And the Cuban-American Foundation’s criticism of Gutierrez Menoyo’s visit lacked the virulence of previous occasions.

On Eighth Street, the central meeting point of anti-Castro activists in Miami, reactions were also moderate, yet another indication that the ranks of the “dialoguists” – as those in favour of negotiations with Castro’s government have been dubbed – are growing.

Another sign of the change in attitude within the exile community was seen in an interview of Gutierrez Menoyo this week in Miami on a programme broadcast by the Sur television network.

Several anti-Castro telephone callers spoke on the programme, but none had the aggressive, threatening tone of calls during an interview of Magda Montiel-Davies, one of the Cuban-Americans who participated in the April 1994 meeting in Havana.

Meanwhile, Gutierrez Menoyo has announced plans to travel to Washington and to several Latin American capitals to further his call for negotiations with Castro.

A significant sector of President Bill Clinton’s administration welcomes Gutierrez Menoyo’s effort, because it means the Democratic Party would become less dependent on the votes controlled by Mas Canosa.

The Cuban exile community could play an important role in the 1996 elections, in which Clinton hopes to be reelected.

If Gutierrez Menoyo is able to strengthen his position and offer a valid moderate option, and a sector of the exile community begins to urge an end to the 33-year-old U.S. economic embargo of Cuba as a means to speeding up negotiations with Havana, Clinton would be provided with an elegant way to end the ostracism of the Caribbean island nation.

Castro’s strategy now seems to be focused on removing the issue of the blockade from the domestic U.S. scene and transferring it to a Cuban context.

Thus, it would be the exile community that would play a key role, rather than the electoral interests of Republican Senator Jesse Helms – who has proposed stiffening the embargo – or Mas Canosa’s political ego.

It is this that seems to underlie the unexpected rapprochement between Castro and Gutierrez Menoyo.

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